


Hell is Better with Friends

by DemonSaint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit, Blood and Gore, Death, Demigods, Demons, Displaced, Drug Addiction, Drugs, Friendship, Gen, Hypnotism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Metahumans, Multi, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Sirens, Torture, Violence, Zoan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 15:21:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18995299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonSaint/pseuds/DemonSaint
Summary: Three adults of Earth are stolen from their homes and thrown into a world only two of them are familiar with, in bodies that are many years younger than what they were supposed to be. Unfortunately, they don't land in the nicest part of the world, and haven't actually fought a day in their lives. As they try to figure out how to get home— or, barring that, how to survive and thrive in this world when they could barely survive in their own— they will make both friends and foes.





	Hell is Better with Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prologue.
> 
> Three adults come home to talk about their problems, but their lives end unexpectedly in a blaze of nuclear fire.

_I hate my life,_ I groan internally as the customer I'd been listening to for the past fifteen minutes decided to, again, change the description of what he was looking for. Of course, I never let the emotion of depressed frustration flicker across my face, instead keeping focus on the man with a look of interest as he, again, described the device he was looking for a cable for.

Everything except for the female port that he'd be plugging it into.

He already said he was looking for a cable to connect his computer to his monitor, but the shape of the port was important. Granted, I'm not the person who is supposed to be working in the technology department— I'm logistics, the person who keeps count of inventory, unloads the truck, and stocks the shelves— but even I know that it's a tossup between four different kinds of cables, and he didn't seem to care that these were _drastically_ different in shape.

I snap one finger as he finishes up his ramble, pretending to have an epiphany.

"If it's one of the newer monitors, sir, you're going to want to go for..."

I show him to the display port cable and know this doesn't matter in the long run. Customer interactions were temporary, and he was not the worst I'd ever dealt with, but I'm not always a patient person. I stick to schedules, and sudden changes to my schedule stresses me out. Especially when it comes to customer service; This guy dragged me away from punching out for the end of my shift and into a section I was only in charge of stocking to ask me for a cable that apparently changed shape whenever he described it. I'm fifteen minutes late from driving home and everyone else in the store— amounting to a grand total of four people, excluding myself— were busy. We're understaffed and I'm doing my part to lighten the load, despite the fact that I was supposed to be gone. I had hoped that this would be a quick, simple interaction, but it was clear this guy had no idea what he was talking about.

Daring to voice that opinion, however, was out of the question. Being a young woman, I noticed long ago that a lot of the older men that came into the store tended to disregard me completely if I so much as asked them if they needed help finding anything, so I had to change that "interaction opener" to something along the lines of _"looking for anything in particular?"_

Surprisingly, it worked.

So, in the face of a man that had spent so long looking for what he viewed as one item, I could see him getting frustrated if I asked him any more questions, despite his ever-changing answers. At least, in my mind's eye. At this point, it was better to point him to a cable that had the highest chance of success at working with his computer monitor, despite the fact that I still wasn't one hundred percent sure if it was the right one.

It was this, or HDMI.

"And," I add, offering him the cable, "if it turns out this [i]is[/i] the wrong one, you can always return it within the next thirty days. Just make sure you keep the packaging and receipt so you get your full payment back."

_Please work. Please, just buy this so I can go home. Just let me—_

"Twenty-five bucks for this little thing?" The man asks. I just nod in sympathy. "I'd probably get a better price at Walmart."

I just nod along and offer him what discounts I can. Rewards program, price matching, the works. And, after all of that, he decides to put the cable back on the shelf, thank me, and leave. I wish him a good day, staying polite and cordial despite my misgivings of being twenty minutes late for clocking out (after all, there's no real reason to be rude; It wasn't like he knew it was my time to leave) and I finally get to go home.

I jam out particularly hard to some of the songs on my playlist, singing along even though I could never make my voice as raspy as some of the vocalists; For instance, Hollywood Undead could be rougher or deeper than what I could do, but it wouldn't stop me from performing my impromptu karaoke to the interior of my car. It wasn't like anyone could hear me.

The moment I pull into the driveway, I stop singing openly and simply hum the tune in my head as I unplug the AUX cable and stuff the phone into my pocket, getting quieter as I leave the car and head to the front door of the rental home. It was mid-afternoon, so my brother was most likely asleep, but the second car was absent from the driveway, so our housemate had already left for work.

Just another day, I supposed.

Taking a deep breath, I let out a sigh to release some of the stress of the day as I stepped inside, locking both the car with my remote key and the house, manually, as I made my way to my room, wishing our schedules aligned a little better. 

It was tragic, really. We hardly got to see each other on the days they didn't have off, and I was left home alone about eighty percent of the time. Granted, it was good for home security— I'd almost been murdered by some crazy meth-head with a hatchet a few months ago, and someone else had tried to scam us out of over a hundred bucks afterwards— but we lived together, for fuck's sake. We needed to talk and remember that the others existed if we wanted this to stay stable. Spend some time together, go out, have some fun...

I sighed and shook my head as I prepped for a shower.

Maybe I could lull my housemate into a conversation tonight. Once he starts talking, he hardly shuts up, as long as it captures his interests. If I could get him going about something, we'd be glued to the spot for an hour, so if I could make it last until my brother came home, we might be able to talk about our issues, what was going on with the house, and even just spend some quality time together in our strange little household.

 _The problem is,_ and I grimace at the thought, _I'm not a good conversationalist._

I'm good at customer service, so long as I know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I can bullshit the nearest approximation of what I think the customer needs based on what they're describing, but not when I'm off my game, and my interest is far, far the fuck away from whatever is happening around me. Whatever we talk about, it has to be something close to the heart. Something that captures both of our attention. Something we're both equally obsessed with.

So, here I am, standing in the shower, letting hot water flow over me, and I think of that little figurine that sits on top of my desktop computer. The one my housemate had gotten me when he went to a steampunker convention with his girlfriend.

The figurine of Zoro standing there, crossing his arms, a scar over one eye while the other looks vaguely at where I sit at my desk.

The first thing that popped into my head was One Piece.

Pursing my lips, I automatically go over my shower routine as I remember where I'd taken a break from watching the anime. I stopped watching in the middle of the Dress Rosa arc, while my housemate is all the way at Whole Cake Island now. Maybe even past that, now that I think about it. He'd mentioned Kaido at one point...

Dried and dressed, I get on my computer. My phone buzzes on the nightstand in my room, but I ignore it.

_Looks like I have some catching up to do._

 

*** 

I never had a chance to strike up conversation.

"Oh my _god_ , you would not believe the kind of bullshit I had to put up with today!"

Michael, my housemate, is pacing between the kitchen and his room, waiting for his instant ramen to cook in the microwave. He just got home and started ranting the moment I greeted him.

He works in a call center, talking to people to fix their internet troubles. It pays him a substantial amount compared to his last job, but if he's already ranting about it his first month in, I can only blink and hope he doesn't already try to leave.

Then again, since it pays so well, he's going to want to stay. He is good at what he does, after all, even if it does annoy the hell out of him. Honestly, what he deals with from people wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so rude, but if I were to say that out loud, he'd consider me the bad guy and start ranting about how he has freedom of speech that I can't take away from him. Not that I was trying to, but being an asshole doesn't get him in anyone's good graces, and if he doesn't follow the common rules of social normality such as treating someone with a basic level of respect, he's going to find himself alone really quick.

"— And I ask, again, 'did you reset or turn off the modem for more than ten seconds?' And this _idiot_ says—"

... Let's just say, we've had a few spats.

The good news, in this situation, was that he'd already started the conversation. I'd interject here and there, keep him going until he had it off his chest, but it was too early in the night to start a full conversation about One Piece that could last until my brother got home. Even then, I was over a hundred episodes behind the Whole Cake arc. There was no way to make that up in time for the conversation to start, but perhaps, if I could stand having more spoilers dumped on me, it could be another topic if I ran out of material.

*** 

 

_Is this manipulation?_

I had to ask myself that as Michael launched into an enthusiastic speech about Luffy's new form for Gear 4, Snake Man. It was well past one in the morning, and any minute now, Jacob, my brother, should come home, probably smelling of pizzas and sporting a shitty customer story of his own. Such is the way of working customer service.

I heard the deadbolt to the front door unlock and perked up. Micheal immediately switches gears.

"Oh, Bro's home!"

I smile. Okay, so if it was manipulation, it was honestly for the good of the house. Jacob steps in, looking tired, and I let him have his space as he winds down from his shift, looking utterly drained after a difficult night of delivering pizzas, angry customers trying to wring free food out of him by loudly complaining to his manager about untrue bullshit, barely tipping him anything after the fact, and workplace drama.

I try to be a good big sister. Sometimes I feel like the maid or the mother of the household, but once we have our meeting about the household issues turn into a conversation about what's been up lately, or even plans for the future, things will be better.

We all sat down at the kitchen table, Jacob slouching in his seat and throwing his pizza delivery hat on the ground.

"I fucking hate this," Jacob grumbles, getting louder, "I just want to fucking drive. Just pick up all my shit and drive without worrying about wherever the hell it is I'm going next. I don't want to have to worry about money or if the customer is happy, or some other bullshit, and I sure as hell don't want to worry about the politics on this godforsaken planet."

Huh. That was a strange remark.

"Someone bring up politics at the workplace?" I asked, grimacing. "As if they didn't have enough to bitch about each other, right?"

Jacob stared at me. "What? No, did you check your phone?"

"No," I frowned. Michael's brow furrowed as he stood to go get his, and I was about to do the same. "I heard it buzz earlier, but it always does that when it's done with its security scan."

"It was a national alert," Jacob grumbled, "someone's threatening to hit us with fuckin' nuclear bombs over something some dumbass politician said. It's fucking bullshit."

Oh. Oh, hell.

"That's fucked." I state dumbly, unsure how to react. "How serious is it?"

"Just a threat, but it doesn't fuckin' help that any moment, someone can just end our lives before we even get to do anything."

I nod, remembering other threats that were made over a year ago, and how frightened my friends and I had been at the prospect of getting hit with a bomb like that. How stupid our politicians were with threatening nuclear warfare right back and how close we had been to getting nuked was suddenly weighing on my mind.

Michael comes back into the room, reading over something on his phone, and I stand from my chair to go snatch mine, finding the national alert from an hour ago displayed on the screen. Jacob sighs from the dining room, his head in his hands, but nothing feels real or imminent.

Dealing with the bullshit of our parents or other, older adults that had taken us in for a time had taken their toll on us. Up until we'd gotten this house, it felt like we were in some kind of limbo. Our numbness had only grown over the past few years, and in the face of nuclear warfare and national crisis, we can't do much to stop or change what could be coming, even if it directly effects us, so we just sit in silence for a couple of minutes as Micheal does research on the situation. I look between him and Jacob, fidgeting in my chair.

"... Yeah, this has to be bullshit," Michael groans. "They're not going to go all nuclear war on us. It's probably just our joke of a president doing some dumb shit again. Remember the last time we had a National Alert? It was just to test the systems."

My fidgeting only continued. "You sure? Why would they send out an alert like this if it was just some joke?"

"People are stupid." Jacob sighs deeply. "I just wanna pack up and drive somewhere and not have to deal with all this."

"... Yeah." I sigh as well. "... Having this rental is nice, but sometimes I just want to go roughing it somewhere, or go on an adventure. I was looking up videos of people who turned their vans into small, mobile houses. Those were pretty cool, but the vans probably burn out quick..."

"Oh yeah, they'd burn out _fast_." Michael continued to read even as he talked. "As long as you remember it's not the best thing for us—"

"I _know_." I stress. "Again, watching videos of it doesn't mean I'm going to go out and do it. It's just the freedom that'd come with not being forced to stay in the same spot, slaving away day after day, you know?" I then frowned, crossing my arms. "But then there's the issue of money and food, and... all this other bullshit that makes it virtually impossible."

"Especially the van part." Jacob shakes his head, finally sitting up again. "The vans and buses they use in those videos cost _thousands_ , and that's not even putting in what it'd cost for gas, renovations, and maintenance."

Michael shrugged. "I get what you're saying about the adventure part though. Nothing to tie us down and sticking it to whoever tries to fuck us over."

"Get the urge to fly a jolly roger, just because." I joke with a grin. "As if any of us can sail any kind of ship."

"I don't care about pirate shit, I'd get my own starship like the Enterprise and teach myself." Jacob shrugs. "That way I could just say 'fuck you' to everyone that tries to control me. No more of this—"

Our phones collectively buzz, startling everyone out of the conversation.

"The hell?"

I look at the screen of mine. It's a warning. A nuclear weapon was launched, headed right for the States.

Except, from how the ground was shaking, the warning came a little too late.

I look up at my brother and housemate, my heart pounding, and I know taking shelter won't do anything, but I have to try.

"Into the laundry room!"

It's the only thing I can think of. I reach for my roommate's hand because he's closer, and my brother's already kicked his chair behind him on his way to the only part of the house that's encased with concrete. He makes it just as the power shuts off, leaving us in pitch black darkness. We squeeze into the room and I shut the door behind us, and I try to shout to them to duck and cover their heads, but a sudden torrent of air and debris striking the house drowns me out. The intense shaking of the ground and something heavy landing on us leaves us in a pile, someone's elbow and knee knocking the wind out of me as we're pressed upon from above. I can't get my footing, try to lift myself off of whoever I'm on top of, but I'm pinned.

_We're going to die._

I'm Jesse, I'm 24 years old, and don't think I've ever had that thought with such certainty before.

I thought _I need to go_ when the crazy meth head with a hatchet was screaming at me, but back then, I could do something about my situation, and I got away because I wasn't stupid enough to step out of my brother's car. I'd only broken down about it after the fact, when I was trying to dial for emergency services as I sped down the empty interstate, that I could have died.

But here?

I was pinned over my brother and housemate, and I couldn't get off because there was something heavy weighing me down and I couldn't get a breath no matter how hard I tried. A nuclear warhead had just been detonated near enough to my home that we felt the ground shake, and this thought process took only a second, because before I knew it, everything was far, far too _hot_.

I couldn't even scream as the flesh was seared off my bones, the cinderblocks that once made up the wall doing nothing to protect me as they were picked off by the wind and I boiled alive. We were all next, but to my horror, the light streaming in from the missing wall granted me a split second view of Jacob and Michael before we scattered in the wind as ash.

 

 

_No, no, no no no—_

It's the first thing I can think as I dizzily lay, flat on my back, in a black void. I feel like I'm floating and spinning at the same time, yet somehow, grounded, like I'm on some kind of crazy carnival ride that didn't give me any safety belts. The shock of the last image that was burned into my mind keeps me from actually saying anything. It feels like I'm choking, tears streaming from my eyes as my throat threatens to close on me.

 _If I'm feeling, then I'm alive. I'm alive and they're not._ I try to gasp, to get air, but my throat refuses to let anything pass. _How the fuck am I alive?!_

I'd seen them, charred and burning. I felt myself burning, but here I am, feeling my chest aching and eyes streaming with tears as I lay on the ground of some infernally black void.

 _Gods above, I can't deal with this. I can't be alive. Not if they aren't. I can't, I just_ can't.

They were burning, but I was burning, too. I shudder, phantom pains lancing through my entire body, straight down to the marrow.

_It wouldn't be far fetched to believe they're in the same situation that I am, would it?_

I feel myself detaching already, my throat finally allowing me to get a breath in otherwise but my thoughts still sprinting that circuit. My lungs are burning and I finally gasp. I can't move beyond the hyperventilation of the panic attack, and my thoughts are far from my body.

"Shut your mouth, damn brat!"

Something round and hard slammed into my side, hard enough that I'm sent tumbling across whatever it was I was laying on and snapping me to the present. The floor was solid, cold, and it was abrasive as it could be, scraping my skin as I slid to a stop. That hurt! I didn't think the black void held anything in it, much less any other people, and especially not ones that would attack me. And how the hell did they send me flying?! I may be a woman, but I'm tall and I work out! Surely I'm heavier than...

I realize that I feel strange. Very strange. There was a specific lack of _body_ to my body, as I learned from being thrown across the floor. Less cushion, more bone, and it didn't feel like I had scraped the (concrete?) flooring with all of my weight. I didn't feel anything on my chest, either, despite having gone through puberty years ago, and whatever I'm wearing is itchy as hell, like someone simply cut a hole in a burlap sack.

_What in the...?_

It comes to my attention that there is no black void. My eyes are just shut, and when I open them, I'm greeted with the sight of a concrete cell.

My heartbeat immediately spikes. There's someone in the cell with me, wearing a white, full-body suit, as if he were part of some quarantine staff for a deadly virus. Rubber boots and gloves were sealed by tape that wrapped around the sleeves of the suit that overlapped them, and his face was blocked from view by a gasmask and a mirror-like visor. It was full hazmat gear. He— I can only assume that's a he, from the voice earlier— reacts to my movement as I sit up, still reeling from the hit I took a minute ago. I can only estimate height, but by sitting up, my head only comes up to his knee.

 _... Did I shrink?_ I swallow. _Or is this person some kind of giant?_

"What's—" My throat is parched. I cough, trying to clear it, but the dry tissue stings. I continue on hoarsely. "Who are you?"

"... Fully conscious and aware." The man in the suit growls to... himself?

I startle at the sight of someone behind a thick window of glass, taking notes. I don't know what the hell is going on.

I die. I wake up in a strange place with strange people, and... Looking about, I don't see anyone else in the cell with me.

"Did you guys see— my brother, my roommate, they were with me, right?"

"Did you not hear me earlier? I said shut up, brat!" Hazmat stomped to me, one leg swinging back for a nasty kick.

A rubber boot hurts. Seeing this giant stomping toward me, I wasn't quick enough to get out of the way; My limbs felt too weak to drag me out of the line of fire. So my face took the full impact. I heard something crack, and pain exploded from my nose as I reeled back, hands covering my face as it slicked with blood.

"It's bad enough that you drop in from nowhere, you freak, but now you've got to be a pest, huh?!"

 _What did I do? I don't know what I did, why is he screaming at me?_ I shake, my eyes welled with tears at the pain in my face as I tried to stand, to back away. Blood steadily streamed down my face regardless of my attempts to quench it. _I don't get it. I don't understand._

"Johnson, lay off the kid." A sigh comes through a... Is that a giant snail on the wall?

Tucked into the corner of the ceiling was a massive snail, staring down at us. Its eyes were round and white, but they had actual, human-like pupils. It stared down at the scene, and on its shell, I could see the faint pattern of a speaker.

Perhaps they were speakers. Just really uncanny or cute— however you'd classify them— speakers.

This was immediately thrown out the window the next moment, because its mouth moved with the person who was talking. A person who stood on the other side of the glass, pressing a button and speaking at another snail that sat on top of the desk.

"You're there for inspection. Once you're sure it doesn't have any diseases, we can let the other two back in. The World Government is going to want their tests run sooner rather than later."

Hazmat— or Johnson— was grumbling under his breath as he approached me. I was still holding my bloody nose, and though it hurt, the shock of what I was hearing and seeing pushed that to the back of my mind. I couldn't even back away from the fucker who had hurt me over a few words, and he was out of the room before I even registered he was leaving.

This had to be some sort of fantasy. My imagination run wild. A hallucination. There were only two signs that it could have been the world of One Piece, so there wasn't enough evidence; Giant snails and a World Government? A coincidence.

But we _died._

Nothing could have prepared me for this.

**Author's Note:**

> First story on Archive of Our Own. I don't have a set update schedule and this story came to me on a whim. Let's hope I can go through with it this time.


End file.
